


The Greatest Gift of All (is Knowing You're in Love with Me)

by Weasleychick32



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Background Sam/Eileen, Canon verse, Cas is Santa, Christmas Fluff, Dean's Potty Mouth, F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, SPN Holiday Mixtape, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-03 16:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8721289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weasleychick32/pseuds/Weasleychick32
Summary: The one where Cas is a mall Santa and Dean is pathetically in love with him.





	1. Oh He Pays Attention

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for the SPN Holiday Mixtape challenge and inspired by The Greatest Gift of All which you can listen to here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMhWbAtimuE should you so choose.
> 
> A HUGE thank you to Rosie-Berber for her amazing beta skills! You rock!

 

“Vengeful spirit in Omaha, you in?”

Dean doubts Cas is, but he thought he’d ask anyway. He doesn’t _need_ help with a simple salt and burn. But company does wonders at 2am when you’re trying to dig through frozen dirt in late December, especially company with angelic strength. Although Dean would settle for Sam if his baby bro wasn’t off ‘ _tracking a rogue skinwalker with Eileen_ ’ or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Sammy’s got it bad. The past six months he’s been practicing signs in every spare minute. He even bought a “Learn ASL from Home” 3-disc tutorial that he watches obsessively on his laptop. Then two days ago he must have finally decided he was good enough because he spent an entire five hours looking at potential cases before he finally landed on the skinwalker and called up his girl without so much as a, “so get this” to Dean. Whatever. Dean’s got Cas at least.

“I can’t,” Cas responds without looking up from the tangle of yarn in his lap, glaring at it like that will make it behave. The knitting is supposed to be relaxing, but as far as Dean can tell it just gets him all pissy, which, let’s be honest here, Dean doesn’t really mind. Soft Cas is cute and all (adorable really), but smitey Cas is— ahem, well…

“My first day is tomorrow,” Cas continues, oblivious to Dean’s inner thoughts.

“First day?” Dean echoes then smirks. “Didja finally cave and sign up for that class with Mrs. Whittleburn? What’s it called? _Knitting Nights with Nanny_?”

Cas finally looks up and levels his frown at Dean. “It’s _Nana’s Knitting Knights_ and it’s a very respectable group, Dean.”

Dean snorts. “That’s right. Except for old what’s-her-name and her wandering hands.” Dean’s not jealous of a 70-something year old woman. He’s _not_. He’d just like to sort of hurry her along towards kicking the bucket, that’s all. Maybe bury her in a distant field where no one can hear her scream for ever daring to touch Cas without his permission. No big deal.

“Ethel maintains that it was an accident… all seven times,” Cas says with something of a haunted look. Dean frowns, but Cas doesn’t see. He’s gone back to his… hat? Okay, Dean’s not sure what it’s supposed to be. If anything it looks like a fuzzy green strawberry. Dean’s never heard of any strawberry-shaped body parts so maybe it’s for something else? What else do you knit things for if not to wear? Fuck if he knows. It could be anything.

Or maybe Cas really sucks at knitting.

“I start my job tomorrow.”

“Job? You didn’t tell me you got a job.” Dean pushes away the irrational burst of hurt in his chest. He’s not Cas’s diary. It’s stupid to expect him to tell Dean everything that’s going on in his life, even though they live together and there’s some things that you should share with the people you live with. Sure, Cas had told him he was looking, but not that he’d been hired.

“Is it another Gas ‘n Sip gig?”

Cas hums and shakes his head as he tried to manipulate the yarn with his needles. “No, they didn’t like that I quit without notice last time. It’s at the mall.”

“The mall?” Dean parrots stupidly, but fuck if he knows what kind of jobs there are at the mall that an _angel_ would be interested in. “Like, selling candles or something?”

As he watches Cas fumble his needle and unravel his attempted stitch, he can’t quite imagine him folding t-shirts at Old Navy or twisting up pretzels at Queen’s pretzel stand.

Cas huffs and shoves the pile of yarn to the side with a scowl. He turns his head up to look Dean dead in the eye and growls, “I’m Santa,” with not a jolly grin in sight.

**.**

**~*~**

**.**

“There’s no such thing as Santa, Dean.”

Sam has sounded distracted since he answered Dean’s call and this Grade-A comment only goes to show where Dean now ranks in his brother’s list of important people. He probably can’t wait to get back to frenching Eileen or whatever it is they’ve been doing. Maybe she’s sleeping it off and that’s why Sam’s talking in a whisper. Whatever.

“A _mall Santa_. Jesus, Sam. Focus!”

“Oh. Huh, that’s actually a pretty good fit for him.”

What? Dean draws up Cas’s almost perpetual frowny face into his mind’s eye, only sometimes broken up by a confused squint or VERY RARELY a soft smile. None of that says HO HO HO to him.

“Yeah okay,” he snorts. Dean glances up in his rearview mirror, but there’s nothing there except worn asphalt and plowed up corn fields. It’s not often that he runs into the State Patrol on these old backroads, but it pays to be vigilant… especially when one has a tendency to go 85 in a 55.

“No really,” Sam insists. “He’s been looking for a way to give back to humanity, something less violent, you know, make a positive impact. I think this will be really good for him.”

“He told you that?” Dean blurts, unable to help the slight emphasis on _you_. Cas is supposed to be _his_ best friend, _Dean’s_. He’s not supposed to tell Sam about his innermost thoughts and only use Dean as a sounding board for whatever mundane human activity he wants to try out next (the yoga very nearly killed him).

“No,” Sam scoffs, making Dean feel a little bit better. “I’ve been paying attention is all.”

Dean doesn’t appreciate the implication that he _hasn’t_ been paying attention. Oh he pays attention. These days it seems all he does is pay attention. Does Sam pay attention to the way Cas’s lips curl up and his eyes go soft when he’s watching animal documentaries? Does _Sam_ notice how adorable Cas is when he slumps into the kitchen at 8:00 sharp every morning, sleep rumpled and mute until he’s had at least a full mug of coffee? Does _Sam_ notice the line that furrows between Cas’s eyebrows when he’s concentrating on a stitch or the deft sureness of his hands as he strokes a brush across a canvas?

No, he fucking doesn’t. He better not.

“I pay atten—,”

“Sam!” Eileen’s voice through the phone is distant, but pissed off and urgent.

Sam curses and barely gets out a rushed, “gotta go!” before the call disconnects. Dean frowns at the screen before tossing it into the passenger seat and turning his full focus to driving once more.

“Dick,” he mutters. “What happened to bros before hoes?” Whatever. Let Sam have his fun, Dean’s got a ghost to smoke anyhow.


	2. Find Him if You Really Want Him

The ghost turns out to be more of a poltergeist and a nasty one at that. If Dean didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all. His muscles ache and are all locked up after a night of being pelted with furniture, thrown into walls and then later a grave stone while digging up said grave and then immediately getting back into the Impala and driving the three and half hours back home despite the weather forecasters’ warning of the impending snow storm. Or maybe the poor weather coming through fueled his need to get back right away before he got stuck somewhere.

Either way he made it back as the sun was rising, no snow in sight. All he wants to do is crumple into a miserable heap with a tub of Icy Hot and a cold beer in front of whatever Cas wants to watch on Netflix. Probably Cupcake Wars. He’s been on a binge.

“Cas?” Dean shouts over the clanging of the bunker door falling shut behind him. There’s no response - not that Dean was expecting one. Cas loathes shouting across the bunker. He’s much more likely to silently finish up whatever he’s doing and make his way to you or, in most cases, he’ll ignore you entirely, forcing you to go find him if you really want him.

Not that any of that stops Dean from having very loud, very one-sided conversations with him. Sam hates it.

“The ghost wasn’t actually a ghost. Fucking poltergeist if you can believe it.”

Dean turns the corner into the kitchen with still no sign of Cas, again, not unusual. He ducks his head into the fridge and pulls back abruptly as the smell of rotten milk assaults his nostrils. He shuts the fridge.

“It hit me with a fucking lamp!” Dean moves to the walk-in pantry and yanks the chain to fill the cramped space with yellowish light. “One of those fancy ones with a brass base and a fucking stained glass shade.”

He loads his arms with bread, peanut butter, chips, and a box of Honeybuns. “I’m pretty sure I still have glass in my ears.”

He dumps his bounty on the counter and only then does he notice the torn bit of Men of Letters stationary bearing a short perfunctory note.

“Son of a bitch.”

It’s also not out of the norm for Dean to get halfway through a one-sided conversation only to discover he’s been talking to himself.

**.**

**~*~**

**.**

Dean hates the mall. There are too many people and they’re all rude. The food court is overpriced, it’s goddamn loud, and 7 times out of 10 he walks away from the pretzel stand with a pretzel that should have been mercifully put to rest hours before. During the holidays all of that gets exponentially worse, except the pretzel thing. He actually has a better chance at getting a good pretzel, but is it worth the cost? Most of the time the answer is a firm no.

Today he’s thinking yes. The Christmas decorations are nice, he got a perfect specimen of a pretzel, he just watched a little biddy old woman clobber a punk rock looking guy with her purse to get to the last size small leather jacket at Fleeceman’s, oh! And Cas is dressed up in a Santa fat suit and Dean’s got photographic evidence. Totally worth spending the past two hours at the mall after getting bored with being all alone at the bunker.

He snickers to himself as he bites off another chunk of pretzel. Cas hasn’t noticed him yet and Dean’s starting to think that he won’t. It’s not like Dean’s trying to hide, but the only table that was open when he showed up that was anywhere near the North Pole was the one half behind a pillar and within smelling distance of the bathroom. Lucky for Dean, he still stinks enough like dirt, sweat, and smoke that he can’t smell much else.

As Dean watches, another crying kid is getting hauled by the wrist up to Cas on his giant green throne. Cas himself is almost unrecognizable under all the beard, makeup, and velvet. Dean had to get clear up to the fence when he first got here and squint to make sure it was really him and he wasn’t creeping on some other poor sap. He’d recognized his eyes first, that unique powerful blue that Dean thought had to be a side-effect of his grace until that time when Cas got dragged home to heaven and they were left with Jimmy.

He recognized his smile next when Cas smiled at something a babbling little girl said. That’s when Dean knew beyond a doubt that it was his angel behind what had to be an entire pound of makeup. Whoever did it deserves a medal or something. He looks not a day younger than 65. In all reality, Dean knows Cas is way older than that, but his body is only in its late 30’s to early 40’s. Now he’s got _wrinkles_ , deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and laugh lines around his mouth, not to mention the rosy red cheeks, bushy white beard, and red cap resting atop snow white hair.

It's no wonder Dean didn’t believe it was him at first.

He thinks it’s gotta be his eyes that got him the job. Face it, it would have been a million times easier to find someone who fit the age and weight requirements, but there’s no faking that kind of blue. Also, Dean can see now, Cas is damn good with kids. _Scary_ good. There hasn’t been a single kid that’s walked away without a smile, even the ones who cried at first. Dean’s starting to wonder if he’s using his angel mojo.

Cas has already worked his magic on the crying little girl that Dean watched get dragged up there not a full minute before. Now she’s smiling shyly, but becoming more and more animated with her arms as she explains what she wants for Christmas while Cas listens with his usual brand of serious intensity, tempered by the curl of his lips in a genuine adoration.

“You’re starting to weird out the parents, you know.”

Dean sputters around the straw of his blue Icee and whirls around to find a preteen coolly staring him down from the other side of a pair of yellow thick-framed glasses. Dean leans back and takes in the rest of her rather loud getup.

Her hair is a dark mass of curly-Q’s that fluff around her face in a cloud, almost hiding the black rhinestones dotting the outsides of her frames. Dean’s not sure what’s going on with her clothes. The shirt is fine, a solid green t-shirt fitted snug over her belly and almost hidden from view by a thick knit yellow and black striped scarf that looks way better than anything Cas produces.

The pants… well, they’re either the latest in slouch fashion or they’re pajama pants. He thinks maybe he could figure it out if they didn’t hurt his eyes so much to stare at directly. They’re wide-legged and flowy and covered with all sorts of tiny flowers, butterflies, bees, and clouds in bright, contrasting colors that make Dean dizzy when she shifts back a step.

“It’s winter break. Don’t judge,” the girl huffs, bringing Dean’s attention back to her face, blinking rapidly to clear the spots from his eyes. “Besides you’ve got no room to judge, sitting by yourself taking pictures of little kids like a pedophile that hasn’t figured out how to work the internet.” She says it all in one breath like she has to get it all out before she loses her nerve.

Dean’s eyes go wide. “Pedo— Excuse me?!”

“That’s right, you heard me.” She crosses her arms over her chest and lifts her chin challengingly, but her eyes are wide with poorly disguised terror. This kid seriously thinks he’s here creeping on little kids. What the fuck?

“No, no. That’s not— I’m not— I’m friends with Santa,” he sputters.

Disbelief flickers over her round face quickly followed by indignation. “How old do you think I am?”

“Uhh twelve?” Dean guesses.

“Try fourteen,” she says snidely. “I stopped believing in Santa like five years ago.”

Jesus Christ. Why is this happening? People are staring.

“Okay, listen. You’ve got it all wrong.” Dean points sharply across at the North Pole. “The guy in the Santa suit is my best friend. And the pictures, the pictures are for blackmail. Obviously. Look. No kiddie pics.”

Dean holds out his phone for her to take, suddenly hit with an intense wave of relief for how careful he was to not catch random kids in his picture taking. The girl still looks skeptical, but accepts his phone, unlocking it with an expert swipe of her thumb.

“See?” Dean prompts. “Not a creepy kid pic in the bunch.”

“So you’ve got a thing for old dudes? There are a lot of pictures…”

“It’s blackmail,” Dean snaps, snatching his phone back. “And he’s _not old_ , that’s why it’s funny. I’ll show you.”

Dean flips past another half dozen blurry, squinty eyed Santa pics (okay, maybe there are kind of a lot) until he finds one of Cas from a couple months ago, smiling as he poses with his very first jack’o’lantern.

“See?” he demands, turning the screen so she can see.

“Oh wow,” she says, taking the phone to see better.

“Exactly,” Dean responds, smug. “It’s _hilarious_.”

“Santa’s hot.”

“Yea— Wait, no.” No no no no no no no no. “Dude you’re like twelve! Gimme that back!”

She scowls at him. “I _just said_ I’m fourteen,” Little Miss Fourteen snaps, but she relinquishes his phone. Her nails match her glasses.

“Whatever,” Dean grumbles.

“Anyway, I just came over to make sure you weren’t perving on the kids—,”

“Jesus Christ.” Dean runs a hand down his face, resolutely not looking around at whoever might still be witnessing the scene. If she could just stop saying that out loud…

“But it turns out you’re just perving on your best friend instead so that’s fine—,”

“Oh my God, just leave.”

“Dean?”

Dean’s head whips up so fast something creaks. Cas is standing not five feet away, elf escort hovering at his elbow as he frowns in confusion. Dean shoots out a quick prayer into the void that he didn’t overhear what Miss Priss just said and decides his best bet is to act natural.

“Hey _Santa_ , how was your first day?” Dean asks with a teasing smirk. Cas’s eyes light up with a soft kind of contentment that Dean hasn’t seen before.

“Wonderful. The children were so kind and thoughtful. And I found out that I get paid two days before Christmas so I’ll have enough to get gifts for you and Sam.” Cas’s positively _cheery_ smile stretches the fake laugh lines around his mouth.

Dean’s heart catches in his chest. Fuck. If Cas is getting him a gift that means he’ll have to find something for him too. He’s terrible at giving gifts. And what the hell do you get an _Angel of the Lord_ anyhow? He’s fucked.

“That’s uh, great. Hey, I bought you a pretzel,” he says, waving a hand at the still wrapped pretzel. “And a uh, an Icee, but I drank most of it. Sorry.”

“A what?” Cas takes a step forward, ignoring the elf’s frown of disapproval or maybe he simply doesn’t notice.

Dean grins. “An Icee, dude. It’s Blue Raspberry. Wanna try it?”

“There’s no such thing as blue raspberries,” Cas says, but he takes another step forward and accepts the cup anyway and Dean tries not to laugh at how he looks walking in the fat suit. So much _velvet_.

Cas maneuvers the straw through his fake beard and takes a sip. His lips instantly pucker and he pulls the straw away from his mouth. “It’s cold,” he complains. Dean huffs a laugh and takes his cup back.

“No shit, Sherlock. It’s an _Icee_. What’d you expect?”

“I think I prefer the pumpkin drink Sam bought me from that coffee shop.”

“Jesus, of course you do.”

“It was warm and pleasant. I still don’t understand why you refused to try it.”

“Because it’s a—,”

“Excuse me,” the elf cuts in sharply before they can devolve into an old argument. “We need to get you changed so the next shift can start.”

“Of course,” Cas agrees immediately, stepping away and making Dean realize how close they’d be standing. “I’ll meet you here?” he asks Dean.

“I’ll wait,” Dean confirms, resuming his seat. Cas smiles over his shoulder as the elf leads him off at a brisk pace.

“Wow,” says a voice to his left.

Dean closes his eyes and refuses to turn and look her in the eye.

“Best friend? You sure you don’t mean _boyfriend_? That was revolting.”

Why is she still here?

“Don’t you have something better to be doing? I thought it was your winter break,” Dean complains. “Shouldn’t you be running amok with your friends or something?”

The girl’s silence is what finally gets Dean to open his eyes and turn to find her. She’s picking at her nails with an embarrassed frown. “None of your business.”

Dean raises an eyebrow and waits until she huffs and rolls her eyes. “I’m waiting for my mom to get off work. She didn’t want me home alone all day in case I burn down the apartment complex or something.”

Dean nods. He he’s pretty sure it’s more than that, but it’s not his business and he’s not about to interrogate a 14 year old over a crummy home life.

“Lived that life,” he commiserates. “It sucks, but at least it’s the mall right?”

She ignores his second statement and shoots him a quizzical look. “You have?”

Dean shrugs and goes with the bare basics PG version of his childhood. “My dad traveled a lot and dragged me and my brother around with him so I spent a lot of time entertaining myself in boring places like construction sites and apartment lobbies.”

She frowns for a long moment, but then seems to accept this as truth. Her shoulders relax and she even sits down in a chair at a table near Dean’s, the area having cleared out along with Santa.

“At least you had your brother for company,” she points out.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean agrees, not mentioning that they were _a_ _lot_ younger than she is and it was fucking _hard_ as a six-year-old to keep his two-year-old brother quiet and happy for six to eight hours every day. He could have cried the day his dad deemed his whopping eight years of age old enough to stay at the motel by himself and take care of his baby brother. That’s why he never understood why it was such a big deal to people that they were there alone. It sure beat the hell out of trying to keep the curious two-year-old from playing with the rusty nails he found in the dirt. And besides, they were never really alone. They always had each other.

“What time’s your mom off?” he asks, more to fill the sudden silence than to find out.

“Soon,” she says with a cagey expression Dean knows all too well. He raises his eyebrows at her, but doesn’t press. She deflates a bit and picks at her nails some more where the paint is chipping.

“She really is getting off soon. She has to pull an extra hour, but they’re not allowed to work more than 12 at once so they have to let her leave at six.”

Dean doesn’t mention that that’s still three hours away. Instead he asks if she has any gift ideas for a dude about his age. The girl smirks and leans forward like she’s going to let him in on a secret.

“You could just tell him that you think he’s sexy and ask him on a date.”

Dean feels his cheeks heat as he sputters, “I— Don’t— Shut up.”

She just laughs and leans back with a satisfied grin. “Don’t worry. He’s totally into you.”

Jesus Christ.


	3. He Chose Me

“I’m not interrupting, am I?”

Dean glances around the mostly deserted corner of the food court that he sought out to make his very important urgent phone call and told Annalise (aka Miss Priss; aka Little Miss Fourteen) to watch for Cas.

“You are actually,” Sam’s voice clearly conveys his irritation, even through the phone. “What’s the problem now?”

Dean would love to prolong Sammy’s irritation and maybe even provoke him into a tantrum, but he’s kind of on a time limit himself.

“Cas is gonna buy us Christmas presents with his paycheck,” he blurts.

“…Okay?”

Dean growls out a frustrated sigh. Does he have to spell it out?

“I don’t know what the hell to get him! What do I get him?”

Sam snorts. “Seriously? Cas is like the easiest person on the planet to get gifts for. Hell, you could bring home a… a _field mouse_ and he’d be ecstatic.”

“No,” Dean says immediately, shaking his head. “No pets.”

“Not even a cat? They’re self-sufficient and—,”

“Could you take this seriously? You know I’m not fishing for a gift to get _you_ , right?” Dean snaps, losing what little patience he started the call with.

“I _was_ being serious, dickhead, but you really want to know what the best gift you could give him is?” Sam’s tone doesn’t bode well for Dean. He can practically feel Sam’s pinched irritated expression oozing through the receiver. “You could tell him that you’re in love with him.”

Dean’s heart plummets to his toes. He kind of figured Sam knew, but they’d never actually talked about it before and hearing Sam voice it so easily hits Dean like a punch.

“Really?” Dean spits, regaining control of his tongue. “You get a girlfriend for all of two minutes and now you’re Mr. Relationship Guru? Thanks, but no tha—,”

There’s a scuffling on the other line and then Eileen’s carefully enunciated words wash over Dean like a tidal wave.

“Dean. Quit making excuses, man up, and go tell him so you can stop bothering Sam and me.” Dean sputters, already stringing together nonsensical excuses when Eileen interrupts. “If you’re talking I can’t hear you. Remember?”

Sam’s bark of laughter is cut short and Dean pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at the screen blinking ‘ _Call Ended_ ’.

God help him, he likes her. He’s gonna have to steal Sam’s _Learn from Home_ disc set, isn’t he?

**.**

**~*~**

**.**

Dean makes his way back to table where he left Annalise and finds himself entirely unsurprised that Cas is sitting with her, prattling on about something while she listens looking more amused than alarmed – which is about the standard Dean sets for taking Cas out into public so he figures all is well enough and takes a minute to get his head sorted out before he joins them.

It’s not that he doesn’t _know_ how Cas looks at him sometimes. And it’s not like he doesn’t realize that he looks back the same way. It’s just… it’s _Cas_ , angel of the friggin’ Lord. And he’s Dean, righteous man who broke the first seal and has actual, literal blood on his hands more often than not. How could he, in good conscience, bring Cas down like that? Down into all the muck and grit and gore that festers in humanity like a rot.

He can’t do that to him, or at least, that’s what he’s always told himself.

Yet here Cas is, not so much as having fallen from grace as executed a swan dive with intent and purpose and _choice_. Here he is with a job, hobbies, and his own bedroom. He has favorite TV shows, foods, drinks, books, and people. Dean’s not quite so stupid that he doesn’t realize that he’s one of those favorite people; he played a pivotal part, intentional or not, in Cas falling in love with humanity and choosing to leave behind billions of years of family, history, and home to live instead with _Dean_.

Dean never acted on his feelings. He didn’t test the waters beyond friendship and he didn’t ask Cas to stay… but Cas did anyway. He chose Dean over everything else and simply knowing that is _doing things_ to him. It makes him want to touch and claim and tell the entire universe, ‘ _Fuck off, he’s mine. He chose me!_ ’. The words itch at the back of his throat, making it almost impossible for him to remember why exactly he’s holding back.

Still…

What if he makes Cas hate him and he leaves? Dean wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he chased off his best friend. Better to take the offered crumbs than to lose the whole cake, right?

“Dean?”

Cas’s voice startles Dean from his thoughts. He shakes himself out of the funk he’s somehow fallen into and forces his face into a neutral expression. He hadn’t even heard Cas approach him yet here he is standing right in front of him, his face now makeup, beard, and velvet free, is scrunched into a concerned, thoughtful expression that almost screams, ‘ _What’s wrong_ ’.

Cas doesn’t ask though.

“The snow is here,” he says instead. His tone is dower, like he’s pronouncing someone dead, but nearly ten years has given Dean the gift of sight and he can see the underlying excitement in Cas’s eyes. All these years and he still loves snow.

Dean’s face cracks into a smile against his will. “What do you say we head home and stake out our spot?”

Cas nods eagerly and smiles in that soft genuine way that Dean can’t get enough of. He’s seen the guy smite demons with a touch. It’s amazing to see how gentle and kind he can be after so many years of needing to be an unrelenting celestial force. Dean forces himself to look past Cas to find Annalise sitting at her same table over his shoulder. She hastily shifts her gaze away like she’s been intently examining the oversized wreath hanging over their heads rather than watching them.

“I think we need to do something for our new friend first though,” Dean says.

Thirty minutes later, Dean and Cas are in the Impala, carefully pulling out of the parking lot as snow falls thick on the road and glitters under passing street lights, leaving behind a content girl with a stack of shiny new comics and a promise of more if they run into each other again. Dean means to make it happen. Halfway to the bunker and only a quarter of the way through whatever Christmas song Cas is torturing Dean with on the radio, Cas reaches over and catches Dean’s hand in his own.

Dean doesn’t breathe for the solid ten seconds that Cas holds his hand.

“What you did for that girl was very kind.”

“Wasn’t nothing,” Dean mutters, desperately hoping Cas’s can’t feel the way his heart is pounding out of control.

“It was to her. And it was to me,” Cas disagrees tactfully. With a final squeeze he relinquishes Dean’s hand and Dean can breathe. They don’t speak again, though Cas hums along with the radio,

_‘Through the window I can see,_

_Snow begin to fall_

_Knowing you're in love with me_

_Is the greatest gift of all’_

_Dammit_. Dean hates it when Sam’s right.

**.**

**~*~**

**.**

There isn’t a good place to watch the snow come down from inside the bunker (read: no place at all considering the whole _underground_ thing), so Dean parks Baby along the side of the road in front of the bunker and cuts the engine. She’s already well dusted with the thickly falling snow so he doesn’t figure leaving her out for the night can do much more damage. He’s already got plans to give her a good hose down in the garage tomorrow anyway. That road salt tears cars up and Baby deserves better than that after all the crap they’ve put her through.

It’s not the first time him and Cas have stayed out to watch the snow. In fact, as it’s one of Cas’s favorite winter pastimes, they’ve gotten into something of a routine depending on the kind of snow. If it’s a gentle falling snow they’ll sit out on the hill over the top of the bunker, mugs of hot cocoa or coffee cupped between un-gloved hands with nothing disturbing the soft silence save the occasional slurp. Sometimes those days will turn into a snowball fight with Sam or maybe they’ll make a snowman, but more often than not they’ll go back inside to curl up on Dean’s bed and watch Netflix and carry on the quiet.

This is a blizzard. The cooling ticks of Baby’s engine can’t be heard over the howl of the wind as it buffets the low sitting vehicle and whips snow across the windshield in a thick white sheet. The trees edging the lane dance, bending and creaking, shedding limbs here and there as they give out under the force of the storm.

“I’m going out,” Cas says, eyes wide with the kind of wondrous awe he gets when he watches mother nature at work.

“Alright.”

Dean never goes with him, content to stay in the semi-heated protection of the cab rather than throw himself out into the melee of the elements. Besides, it’s Cas’s thing and he’d feel stupid standing around getting buffeted about while Cas does his immovable object impersonation, not to mention he’d feel like he’s intruding on a private moment. Dean will wait here, like usual, and when Cas has had his fill he’ll come back. He always does.

Cas shoulders open the door, ducking out into the wind as the door blows shut behind him. Dean watches him walk forward until he’s in the center of the lane. There his arms stay somewhat awkwardly at his sides as his chin tips up to the sky. His eyes stay open despite the wind and snow and how they tear at his coat and through his hair. Slowly a faint smile curls his lips.

There’s something magical about watching Cas take in a storm like this; Dean decided it awhile ago. It takes him back to when he first met him, when he was raw power barely contained by human flesh. Something so _other_ that lights flashed, bulbs burst, and TV and radios were reduced to static as he entered a room. He’s gotten a lot better at control now and Dean thinks, though he’s never asked, that Cas’s grace has never gotten quite as strong as it once was before the whole Metatron debacle. He wonders if standing at the center of a storm, feeling the world rage around him, he wonders if it takes Cas back to when he was full to the brim of Heaven’s fury and wielded it like a sword.

Dean’s not sure how long it’s been when the window fog creeps far enough over the windshield to obscure his view, but his legs are cold and his fingers stiff so he starts up the engine and adjusts the heat settings. The growl of the Impala seems to bring Cas back from wherever he goes and a moment later he’s crowding his way back into the car, hair wild and his entire self coated in a fine white dusting that Dean knows from experience will be melting off onto his leather seats in quick order. Still, it’s better than the blood and gore they all three track in after what seems like every hunt, so he doesn’t complain.

A tree limb cracks and falls on the side of the road 100 yards off and Cas lets out a breath. ‘ _Here we go_ ,’ Dean thinks.

Gently falling snow means hot cocoa and peaceful time spent together. Blizzards are for revelations. The kind of communion where they stare out the windshield and watch the destruction of the storm, offering up bits of their souls and the black shadowy things they carry with them amongst the debris.

Dean doesn’t necessarily like these kinds of snows. But it’s the _after_ that keeps him coming back. The during is messy and loud and chaotic, but the after… the after is a slate wiped clean, a fresh start. It’s a calm and gentle reassurance that life goes on. It feels like healing.

There’s the storm. Then there’s the after. It’s the after that gets Dean through.

“It’s so pure, the snow,” Cas murmurs, barely audible to Dean’s ears, like he’s not sure he wants him to listen. This is how it usually starts. Cas will offer up a seeming non-sequitur and then somehow tie it into an internal or external crisis he’s having without ever explicitly spelling it out. Dean envies that ability something fierce. “It causes so much destruction, but it’s always forgiven.”

Dean doesn’t say anything. He knows Cas is thinking about his own path of destruction, how he tore through both Heaven and Earth without discrimination. Dean has long since forgiven, but as he knows all too well, forgiving yourself always takes more time and more penance. Even then, he’s not sure if it ever really happens, or if you simply figure out a way to live with the guilt.

Besides, Dean already figures he’s a lost cause on whatever Cas is trying to get off his chest. He’s too busy freaking out about how to drop the L-bomb he’s been keeping under wraps for God knows how many years now. Technically, Christmas is still five whole days away (if he’s going to take Sam’s advice literally and let Cas know he’s in love with him as his gift), but Dean knows that if he lets it lie that long he’ll come up with an Encyclopedia worth of reasons why he couldn’t ever tell a soul. It wouldn’t be difficult; he’s got a decade worth of practice.

“Something’s bothering you,” Cas states, drawing Dean’s attention away from blankly staring out the window. Cas is frowning at him, blatantly breaking the unwritten, unspoken ‘No Eye Contact’ rule.

“Your heart rate is elevated and you’re holding the steering wheel even though we’re parked.”

Dean drops his hands to his lap and immediately feels a million times more uncomfortable. His hands twitch with the need to hold onto something and he can do exactly jack-all about his heart rate.

“Are you going to tell me?” Cas asks, his expression carefully blank like he’s gearing himself up for rejection. _Dammit_. Dean lets out a shaky breath. Now or never, right?

“Yeah, I—,” His voice pitches so he clears his throat. He might be able to think more clearly if Cas would stop with the _staring_ already. “Could you just…” he flutters his hand in the general direction of the window feeling like an idiot, but Cas knows what he isn’t saying (or part of it anyway) and after a long searching look he faces the front and leans his temple against the cold glass of the passenger window.

An intense surge of affection rocks over Dean at the sight and he thinks, ‘ _I can do this. It’s Cas_ ’.

He takes a fortifying breath.

“So… I, uh–,” he huffs out a breath and resists the urge to grab the steering wheel again. He rubs the back of his neck instead. “There’s this thing… No, it’s more of— I just…” He sighs.

“Dean, tell me.” Cas doesn’t look away from the windshield. Dean takes another breath.

“I’m— I uh, love you,” he mumbles. He swears the wind stops in that moment so Cas can hear him say it, angel powers or no.

Cas picks his head up off the glass and turns to face Dean with wide eyes.

“Dude. You’re not supposed to—,”

“Say it again,” Cas demands, searching Dean’s eyes.

“I uh, love you?” Dean hazards, looking at the ceiling rather than look Cas in the eye.

“Again, but better,” Cas insists, his lips a flat line but his eyes somehow smiling. Dean’s lips twitch like they want to smile, but his heart is still demanding its release against the inside of his ribcage.

“Cas, I love you,” Dean breathes, closing his eyes.

“Are you sure?”

Dean throws up his hands and scowls at him.

“Fucking— _Yes_ , okay? I. Love. _You_. Castiel, Angel of the—,”

“I love you too, Dean Winchester, Righteous Ma—,”

“Alright, alright. I get it. You don’t have to…” he waves his hand senselessly, “ _that_ ”. Dean doesn’t think he’s blushed this hard since Rhonda’s pink panties back in ’99, but Cas is beaming so he doesn’t hide his face and run like he sort of desperately wants to. Besides, Cas said he loves him and that’s kind of a big fucking d—

“Is this the part where we kiss?” Cas asks, face morphed into a thoughtful squint that ignites something warm in Dean’s chest.

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah Cas. This is the part where we kiss.”

Neither move. Cas seems to be waiting for something and Dean, well Dean’s freaking the fuck out.

“Do you not want—?”

“No, I do,” Dean hastens to say. “I do. It’s— This is just really weird, okay?”

“Because I’m in a male vessel,” Cas says with a frown and a short nod, like he expected nothing less.

“No! No, it’s— you’re my best friend.” Dean wishes he could explain more than that, but it’s all he’s got. All the alarm bells going off in his head are screaming it. _He’s your best friend. You fuck it up like you’ve fucked up everything else and you’re alone. No, worse, you lose him._

Cas’s frown deepens. “Nothing needs to change in that regard. We’re simply… adding a few activities to our friendship.”

“Jesus Christ, Cas.” Dean scrubs a hand down his face and finds that he’s smiling. “Adding a few activities? Like what?” He’s teasing, really, but Cas gets a shy little smile and looks down to his hands in his lap and the uncharacteristic reaction melts something hard and cold in Dean’s chest.

“Like kissing and saying ‘I love you’ and… hand holding?” He looks up at Dean through his eyelashes to gage his reaction and Dean’s pretty sure he’s got a doofy grin on his face.

“Yeah, man. I can do hand holding.”

“Even in the car?” Cas asks. “In front of Sam?”

“ _Especially_ in the car in front of Sam.” Dean points a finger at him like he means business and Cas shocks the hell out of him by grabbing his hand mid poke and worming his fingers between Dean’s until they’re suddenly holding hands in the car. Dean’s mouth is dry, but Cas’s hand is warm and strong and he’s smiling at Dean like this is the most amazing experience of his life so Dean squeezes his hand and tries to remember to breathe.

“What activities would you like to add to our friendship, Dean?”

“Jesus Christ.” Several things immediately come to mind (heh), but Dean finds he can’t ruin the sharing and caring moment now that they’re in it and while Cas is watching him with all the adoration he’s never deserved. The rest will follow later.

“I uh, I like, you know, touching. Like this.” Cas gives his hand a squeeze and Dean feels his face burn. He looks away from Cas’s steady gaze, down to their intertwined fingers instead. It’s worse. It’s surreal seeing Cas’s familiar fingers intermingled with his own. It makes him dizzy. “And, umm, just casual stuff and uh, cuddling is good.”

“I think I will enjoy those things as well.”

Castiel leans closer and Dean pulls away, shaking his hand free, but he stays in the car.

“God, this is freaking me out.” His skin feels electrified. His breaths come short and his heart is pounding so hard it makes his head spin. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confesses. His mouth is dry.

Cas is frowning again and Dean hates himself for bringing it back, knowing it would be so effortless to shoo it away and see that shy smile again, yet he can’t bring himself to.

“I— I’ve been thinking about this for so long and it’s weird that I can finally… and that you’re cool with it. I just… It’s messing with my head.” Dean huffs, frustrated that words don’t come easier for him. Sure, he’s Mr. Suave and Cool when he’s lying out his ass pulling a con, but as soon as he’s trying to be honest and speak from the heart he’s a stuttering mess.

A small amused smile crosses Cas’s lips and shifts closer to Dean along the bench seat. “Those aren’t the words I would use to describe my feelings for you.”

Dean’s heart trips.

“Don’t use the f-word,” he mutters, taking a lame shot at diffusion the building tension in the cab with poor humor.

“What f-word?”

“None. No f-words.”

“Dean,” Cas intones, voice deep and serious. He’s done with Dean’s bullshit already. “Do you want this?”

Dean takes a fortifying breath and lets it out slowly. He’s already spilled the beans. There’s no going back now and no use beating around the bush.

“Yeah.”

“Hold still.”

Dean doesn’t breathe as Cas crowds onto his side of the car and cups his cheeks with one hand, smoothing his thumb over Dean’s cheekbone like he’s something precious. Cas leans in until Dean has to close his eyes or go cross-eyed and then, only a hair’s breadth away, he pauses and his eyes flutter shut as he pushes forward to close the last of the space between them. Dean releases his pent up breath and melts.

Cas’s lips are dry and cold from the wind, but soft. Cas’s scent folds in around him; he smells like snow. The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but Dean is already overwhelmed. Cas pulls back only far enough for Dean to suck in a breath and for him to speak.

“I learned that from Nicholas Sparks.”

It takes a beat for the words to sink in past the kerfuffle of Dean’s state of mind, but once it does Dean bursts out laughing.

“You can’t say shit like that, man.”

Cas smiles back, much too close and his eyes trace along Dean’s freckles in a way that makes him want to hide. He doesn’t.

“I told you nothing has to change.”

Dean lets out a breath and a decent amount of anxiety leaves with it. He looks Cas in the eye. “Yeah well, I want it to.”

Cas startles and looks at him, tilting his head in that cat-like way he has.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah I am.”

.

~ Epilogue: Three Days Later ~

.

The clang of the front door wakes Dean, easily audible through his open bedroom door. A warm body curls around his back and drapes around his waist. Cas. Dean must have fallen asleep on him last night. The last thing he remembers is tuning out some lady complaining about her daughter-in-law’s choice of wedding dress in favor of burying his face into Cas’s neck. Not a bad way to end the night, even if they’d ended the past three in the same way. Dean doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of it, not after how long he made himself wait.

“Sam’s home,” Cas says, voice rough from disuse rather than sleep. Apparently, he can go into a bit of a meditative state that’s sort of like sleep while Dean sleeps. Dean’s already told him that he doesn’t have to hang around in bed all night long just because Dean needs his beauty sleep, but Cas insisted that for now at least there’s nowhere he’d rather be. Sap.

“He has Eileen with him.”

Dean groans and rolls onto his stomach. “He’s gonna make me go to the store,” he whines into the pillow.

“Why?”

There’s a clatter and a bang from the kitchen, swiftly followed by Sam’s voice, “ _Dammit Dean!_ Would it kill you to toss out the milk?!”

Dean sniggers and lifts his head to bellow back, “Merry Christmas, Sammy!”

“Fuck you, Dean!”

Dean rolls over to face Cas and takes in his bright blue eyes, his grumpy frown, and his dark sleep rumpled hair, despite not actually sleeping.

“Wanna brave the Christmas Eve rush and go grocery shopping with me?”

“Only if you stop shouting,” Cas stipulates. Dean scoffs.

“Fine, fine. He’s done talking to me for a while anyway. I embarrassed him in front of his new girlfriend.”

Dean ceases his snickering long enough to press a chaste kiss to Cas’s lips, light and easy like they’ve been doing it for years – like they _should_ _have_ been doing for years – and rolls out of bed.

Outside a fresh layer of pure white snow coats the branches of the trees and lays thick across the lane. The plows don’t come out this far so they take the truck Sam’s been using, purchased (legit and everything) for this precise purpose, counting on the four-wheel drive to get them where they need to go. The sun makes the fresh snow glitter as they follow in Sam’s tracks from his drive in. Everything else remains untouched save a fallen branch here and some animal tracks there. It makes Dean feel like he’s been transported into some kind of fairytale universe only, no… He’s been there, done that already and even then, he thinks as Cas twines their fingers together over the center console, it wasn’t this good.

“What d’you want for Christmas?” Dean asks when he’s parked in the crammed to bursting parking lot of the only open grocery store in town. Cas watches him for a long moment before he answers.

“I have everything I want,” he finally says, smiling gently and giving Dean’s hand a squeeze. Dean makes a sound of disgust and pulls his hand away to climb out of the truck. _That’s bullshit_ , he thinks, even as he retakes Cas’s hand and they make their way up to the store. There’s tons of shit Cas still wants; number one on the list is probably some kind of cute cuddly creature to keep at the bunker and _Goddammit_. Dean hates it when Sam’s right.

Still, that doesn’t stop him from making a trip to the animal shelter two days later and returning with a grumpy old gray and white cat. He is not in charge of cleaning the litter box… though if Cas keeps smiling at him like that and kissing him, the angel might be able to talk him into just about anything.

.

_Fin._

.

~ Bonus After the Credits Scene ~

.

“What do you mean you were _actually hunting_ _a skinwalker_?”

“I _told you_ that’s what I was doing.”

“I thought it was a _euphemism_. What the fuck, Sam? _That’s_ your idea of a romantic getaway?”

“No! I knew she was in the area of one of the attacks and it was common sense that we would meet up and hunt it toge—,”

“ _Right_ , and Cas and me spent the whole week feeling each other up because we had mosquito bites we couldn’t reach.”

“Oh like you could do any better! I bet you just blurted out a crappy ‘ _Wanna make out?_ ’ while you two were watching Game of Thrones or something.”

“Actually, it was quite romantic. He told me he loves me in the Impala during a blizzard. Not that I require romance to be happy in a relationship.”

“…”

“…”

“Well. I stand corrected.”

“I hate all of you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment :)


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